If you throw all the products we buy and the services we use in one basket, then add up the price tag, that's the Gross Domestic Product, which is the primary metric economists use to assess the economic health of a country or region.

The easy part of calculating GDP is the calculation itself: C+I+G+(X-M)=GDP. Got it? No? Well, add Consumption, Investment by companies, Government purchases, and then take the product of eXports (calling it 'E' would lack sexiness) minus iMports ('I' was taken). Viola! GDP.

Still don't get it? Well, knowing the components helps. Consumption is the biggest component, and it's a tally of the cost of all the goods and services we buy. Investment is what companies spend on the real assets they own, plus the value of the inventory that we haven't gobbled up through consumption. Government purchases are what the Feds pay money for (whether it be highways or fighter jets, though big social programs, like welfare, aren't counted). And then we calculate the difference between the goods and services we¿re sending to other countries and the stuff we're bringing in.

Good. That explains it, except there's a catch. Inflation has a habit of distorting the numbers, so economists talk about either Nominal GDP or Real GDP. In fact, Real GDP isn't necessarily "real" for most folks, since it takes any inflation out. Nominal GDP includes the effects of inflation. (There's something called the implicit price deflator which is a calculation using the two, but we'll spare you the details.)

So, now that we know GDP, why do we want to? Well, it's good to compare different markets. And watching the trend shows whether a given economy is growing (good), stagnating (not so good), or shrinking (very not so good). When GDP goes down two quarters in a row, we're officially in a recession.

For the record, GDP is released at the end of each month, with most reporting ¿preliminary¿ data for the previous month. But you won't get final GDP numbers for the fourth quarter of a year until the very end of the first quarter of the next year. After all, it's not an easy number to calculate.

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

CTC Media Schedules Second Quarter 2008 Earnings Release and Conference Call

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Comtex

MOSCOW, Jul 10, 2008 (PrimeNewswire via COMTEX) ----CTC Media, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTCM) will announce its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008 on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 before U.S. market hours.

Senior management will host a conference call to discuss second quarter 2008 financial results on July 29, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. ET (5:00 p.m. Moscow time, 2:00 p.m. London Time). To access the conference call, please dial:

 International: +1 973 582 2741 Russia: 8108 002 531 1012 Passcode: 55184319

A live webcast of the conference call will be available on the Company's corporate Web site at www.ctcmedia.ru/investors.

A replay of the conference call will be available through Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at midnight ET. The replay can be accessed by dialing +1 706 645 9291 or +1 800 642 1687. The passcode for the replay is 55184319. A webcast of the conference call will be archived on the Company's Web site for two weeks.

About CTC Media, Inc.

CTC Media, Inc. is Russia's leading independent media company. The Company owns and operates the CTC television network, whose signal is carried by more than 350 affiliate stations, including 21 owned-and-operated stations, the Domashny television network, whose signal is carried by over 230 affiliate stations, including 13 owned-and-operated stations, and the DTV television network, whose signal is carried by a number of affiliate stations, including 24 owned-and-operated stations. The combined audience share for the CTC, Domashny and DTV networks in 2007 was 12.9%. CTC Media also owns two Russian production companies, Costafilm LLC and Soho Media LLC, and operates Channel 31 in Kazakhstan and a TV company in Uzbekistan. The Company is traded on The NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol: "CTCM". For more information on CTC Media, please visit: www.ctcmedia.ru.

This news release was distributed by PrimeNewswire, www.primenewswire.com

SOURCE: CTC Media, Inc.

CTC Media, Inc. Media: Ivan Philippov Investors: Katya Ostrova
   +7 495 785 6333 Brainerd Communicators, Inc. Media: Jenna Focarino Investors: Michael Smargiassi +1 212 986 6667

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